The Devil of Dialogue

You may think I'm being slightly melodramatic with that title. However, you would be incorrect. I've always felt like the worst part of my writing is the dialogue. I don't know if that's necessarily true - I think after really writing for a while, everything in that document looks like crap at some point or other. But dialogue is the part I worry about the most.

Part of this is my fear over my character's words sounding too contrived, too bookish. Sometimes when I'm talking to myself, I use all sorts of fancy, old-fashioned words that no one uses anymore. Like that scene in National Treasure (haven't seen that in ages, geez) where Diane Kruger tells Nicolas Cage he talks weird - that's how I wish people would talk all the time. And so half of me wants my characters to sound like that, even though I know it makes no sense whatsoever.

The other half of me wants everyone to talk "normal." But what on earth is normal? I'd really like to someday record every conversation I have during the day to figure out what people really spend all their time saying. Has anyone else every thought about that? I mean, we have so many words in our languages, but which ones do we really use? I refrain because I don't have a recording device and that would probably come across as really creepy.

The rest of my reluctance to write dialogue can be blamed on action movies. (I'm not really blaming you, action movies! I love you! I just love you a bit too much for you to be helpful in my becoming a better writer.)
There aren't monologues or even long conversations in action movies. Truth be told, there aren't that many in real life either. I LOVE THAT. Too much talking in a book or movie makes me bored. As a result, I spend more time sighing over explosions than I do witty conversations. And therefore would rather be writing about said explosions, even when they don't fit into the story either.

It's getting easier though. I think I wrote a big chunk of pretty organic conversation today - no action, no explosions, just small chat. It also helps that I was using Write or Die, a handy little application that gets angry at you when you stop writing. I got 1,373 words done in two 20 minute segments, which was a nice little boost to my word count :)

Official More Blessed Word Count: 12,391

P.S. Does this post still look nice without pictures? I wanted to add some action movie examples and a screenshot of that scene in National Treasure, but then I couldn't find one and I figured it'd be strange to have a random montage of action movies.